The current incarnation of the SmartThings hub, which probably won't look much different once Samsung's acquisition of the company comes to fruition (unless they finally decide that white, clunky plastic is passe).

Sam Machkovech

On Tuesday, Samsung announced that it would acquire Quietside, a manufacturer of air conditioners, heaters, and other HVAC appliances, for an undisclosed sum. This follows Samsung's purchase of smart home all-in-one solution SmartThings last week, an acquisition that had been hinted at in July, and the combination points to Samsung's desire to take over American homes by controlling their every device.

At first blush, the 100 percent acquisition of Quietside appears to merely streamline Samsung's operations, since the company already produces its own line of air conditioners—and has relied on Quietside to distribute those offerings in North America for over 15 years. Yet the Samsung announcement went so far as to hint at more to come: "[Samsung] also plans to unveil an enhanced HVAC product lineup that better reflects the needs of North American customers," it stated, though no timeline was attached to that sentence.

We can only assume that such a statement hints at the company's dreams of Samsung device interplay, with phones, watches, alarms, heaters, TVs, and more communicating with each other. As of now, Samsung's home appliance portfolio puts it in better position than its peers to consider taking over every corner of a home's electronics; where Google has Nest, Samsung has ovens and dryers. However, based on Samsung's "only Galaxy devices" compatibility track record, particularly with its Galaxy Gear offerings, we worry that Samsung will devour SmartThings' all-in-one home automation system and kill off compatibility with third-party products and protocols (a feature that, admittedly, was already thin enough when we reviewed the SmartThings hub earlier this year).

Somebody needs to start branding their products as Dumb Thing because frankly, I'd see that as a positive bullet point where some of these newer appliances are concerned. We're going to be in the market for a fridge and stove soon, and the ability to be automated or notified of events will likely be seen as a way to cut costs since those devices often cost more.

This smart appliance thing is not happening for me until three conditions are met.

1. Communication is via a standard protocol, so that I'm not at any risk of vendor lock-in.2. Who gets root? I get root.3. Like the providers of broadcom-based routers and access points who shipped with OpenWRT/DD-WRT, the manufacturers need to throw up their hands and say "We suck at software. There's no chance we'll be able to deliver, let alone maintain the software over the product lifetime and beyond." Then seed a community project to handle the software side of things.

Somebody needs to start branding their products as Dumb Thing because frankly, I'd see that as a positive bullet point where some of these newer appliances are concerned. We're going to be in the market for a fridge and stove soon, and the ability to be automated or notified of events will likely be seen as a way to cut costs since those devices often cost more.

King field charcoal already has. Haven't you seen their commercial with a smart grill?

Standards, standards, standards, and the high cost of buying into it all. Otherwise, yeah!

Oh, we'll have standards.

There will be the Apple standard. The Google standard. The Android standard (which, paradoxically, will be different from the Google standard). The Samsung standard. The Microsoft standard. And the Standard that everyone else uses but uses just differently enough that their products don't interoperate like they should.

Somebody needs to start branding their products as Dumb Thing because frankly, I'd see that as a positive bullet point where some of these newer appliances are concerned. We're going to be in the market for a fridge and stove soon, and the ability to be automated or notified of events will likely be seen as a way to cut costs since those devices often cost more.

King field charcoal already has. Haven't you seen their commercial with a smart grill?

The current incarnation of the SmartThings hub, which probably won't look much different once Samsung's acquisition of the company comes to fruition (unless they finally decide that white, clunky plastic is passe).

Function over Form. $99 for "clunky plastic" vs. $249.99 for any Jony Ive's job. Take your pick. Perhaps the later goes better with a skinny suit and pencil tie.

This smart appliance thing is not happening for me until three conditions are met.

1. Communication is via a standard protocol, so that I'm not at any risk of vendor lock-in.2. Who gets root? I get root.3. Like the providers of broadcom-based routers and access points who shipped with OpenWRT/DD-WRT, the manufacturers need to throw up their hands and say "We suck at software. There's no chance we'll be able to deliver, let alone maintain the software over the product lifetime and beyond." Then seed a community project to handle the software side of things.

Until then appliances can stay dumb.

Some things to think about

#1 - I would agree everything Appliance <--> Appliance should be standardized (like Smart Grid). But Appliance <--> Consumer gets tricky because every appliance will have different needs which will be different between models and manufacturers. So Appliance <--> Consumer should be open, but might not be able to be standard.

#2&3 - Keep in mind, things like ovens are safety devices. Screw up your router, you just lose Internet. Screw up your oven and your house could burn down. Or your food could be under cooked. Or your cat gets cooked because your kid thought it would be funny to put your cat in the oven. So maybe you shouldn't be root, and maybe you shouldn't be able to run any software you want on an appliance, because as soon as you have third party software written by people who don't know how appliances work you are opening yourself up to a lot of risks. You should not have "root" to your airbag controller in your car, so why would an appliance be any different? If something is wrong with the core safety functionality then it is recall time, not "root the device" time...

So it is not that they suck at software, their appliance controllers work just fine. But they might not be experts in network security which is the issue.

My list of requirements:1) Internet connectivity on appliances actually provide me a real benefit that outweighs the high risk of putting my appliances on the Internet2) Open protocols3) I have confidence that any necessary software will be maintained over the expected life of the product (10 years from purchase for most appliances)4) The core features of the appliance and the Internet facing features are handled on two different microcontrollers/microprocessors (so if the Internet part crashes at least my appliance will still run and keep my appliance in a safe state). The two modules can communicate with eachother via RS-485 or CAN or something.

Personally for #4 I would like to see an external module be plugged into appliances for network connectivity. This lets you inexpensively keep your appliance up to date as technology evolves. And it lets you pick if you want bluetooth, wifi, ethernet, zigbee, or whatever else might come down the pipe. But having appliance take on Internet connectivity themselves seems like a recipe for disaster.

I have a feeling it will be a while before any (let alone all) of those requirements are fulfilled.

Many standards yes but personally, the standard that uses electrical wiring communication instead of wireless will be my preferred. Smart home systems are growing and too many of these gadgets depend too much on wifi communication, which shouldn't be the standard but offered as secondary option for those 'hard to reach' areas. Insteon for example offers smart home products that communicate through wires, on top of wireless as an option.

I've been experimenting with Wink branded items (from Home Depot/Quirky/GE).

It's largely built around Zigbee (look, an already existing standard!) and works well.

The only thing Wink cannot talk to directly or through an account gateway (so far) is WeMo devices, but those can be triggered with IFTTT events, and integrated into the whole.

edited for typos

The problem is Zigbee is a lower layer standard, the "application level" isn't defined and there is no standard on this. For something that works in all layers look at Bluetooth or USB. Not that there aren't non-standard uses of both, but this is not that usual, so on most devices you don't have to use special drivers for that non-standard behavior.

Edit: after reading the wikipedia page, it seems that I was wrong and Zigbee actually supports standardized application profiles. Sorry for spreading misinformation.

Samsung is trying hard to to embed it's technologies in the home appliances. They are just bringing new products to the market. As compare to other appliances manufacturers Samsung is flooding the market with it's product. they have to maintain quality with the quantity.